Book Review: Party System Change in South India: Political Entrepreneurs, Patterns and Processes
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023013482796 |
| Author | Shailendra Kharat |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Studies in Indian Politics, 1, 1 (2013): 109–126
Book Reviews 117
For instance, on the relation between Gandhi and Nehru, Anderson merely reduces it to ‘calculations of
mutual interest’, ‘quasi-filial infatuation’ and ‘infantilism’.
Anderson makes sense of many of the decisions and historically contingent events through a very
incisive reading of the kind of individuals that some of the national leaders were, especially Nehru. He
takes delight in pointing to Nehru’s relation with Edwina, and Mrs Gandhi’s alleged affair with M.O.
Mathai. He, insists that, many of the events, be it partition or the debacle of 1962, owed much to the
inability of Nehru in judging the character of individuals around him, and also was vulnerable to self-
deception, and ‘drifted easily away from realities resistant to his hopes and fancies’. These might look
individual traits from certain viewpoint—‘a view from nowhere’—but if one were to politically analyse
them, they could well be practices endemic to a communitarian context. Self-deception, the enduring gap
between thinking and being, non-linear mode of operation, are practices through which the community
finds its functional and sociological actualization. Such inflections would be imperative for any histori-
cal rendering, where the community continues to be the basic unit of the society.
What, however, comes through very convincingly in the book is the fact that making of any kind of
heroes, legends and icons can only be achieved by ironing out ‘self-contradictions’, be they elite or even
subaltern icons; as Gandhi has been sieved through history, so will Ambedkar. It is in critical engage-
ment, as against iconoclastic rendering of nationalist heroes and the politics of patronage (reflected in
uncritical glorification) practiced towards subaltern icons, that we actually and duly recognize their his-
torical role. To that extent this book, even if partially, re-presents an agenda that is already well-set
within the political and academic horizon of social scientists in India.
Ajay Gudavarthy
Jawaharlal Nehru University
E-mail: gajay99@rediffmail.com.
Andrew Wyatt, Party System Change in South India: Political Entrepreneurs, Patterns and Processes.
New York: Routledge. 2010. 225 pages. $49.95.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013482796
This book deals with party system change in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. This is a welcome
addition to the literature on the party system and party politics in India since the focus of its research is
on state politics. Even though India’s politics has been dominated by forces at the state level, little
research had been done on the politics at this level, especially on post-1990 state politics.
The book analyses the new political forces that entered in the politics of Tamil Nadu after 1989. Thus,
the caste based parties like the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and the Dalit parties; the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) and the new catch-all party Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) have been dis-
cussed in separate chapters. The framework of analysis focuses on understanding the agency of the
‘political entrepreneurs’ in creating, shaping and sustaining new political parties in the state. The author
also analyses in detail the institutional and societal environment in the state.
After 1989, the political party system in Tamil Nadu underwent changes. The vigour in mobilization
by the Dravidian parties declined—though they still hold a substantial share of votes in the state politics.
This and the downward trend in the electoral and political strength of the Congress destabilized the
earlier two and a half party system in the state, consisting of two main Dravidian parties and Congress
To continue reading
Request your trial